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Re: New "What Ifs?"
#51
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Steve203
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Any memories of whether the even longer Packards were packed and loaded the same way back to EGB from Briggs? Just looking at these painted and trimmed Hudsons makes me wonder if the same people at Briggs were loading all the brands at the same time at Briggs/Conner?

Memories? I'm not *that* old. :) When all this was going on, I was rolling around in my crib in Dearborn and barely aware of cars.

I have not seen pix of Packard bodies rolling to EGB. Width would have started becomming a problem in the 50s. I take the huge front bumper on that truck as an indication of how wide that load is, and mid 50s senior Packards were a foot longer than those Hudsons.

I don't know for sure if Briggs mixed anything else with the Packards in it's Conner plant. The Briggs plant on Mack, just across the railroad tracks to the west of the Conner Briggs plant, supplied Chrysler on Jefferson.

Between Briggs Conner shipping to EGB, Briggs Mack trucking to Chrysler on Jefferson and Hudson trucking from it's body plant on Conner north of Harper down Conner to Hudson Assembly on Jefferson, and all the plants turning out several hundred cars a day, as Roger says, these rigs must have been all over the place, all day, every day.

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Posted on: 2014/8/10 21:08
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Re: New "What Ifs?"
#52
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Speaking of getting raw material and finished engines in/out of the Utica Plant.

Yes, saw the tracks. It was easy enough to pull raw materials in by rail. In those days, probably a lot more moved by rail than now due to lack of freeways, if it was going a significant distance. The J-47s no doubt were going to Boeing or Air Force maintenance facilities, all out of state. The engine block castings came in from Lakey by rail. My concern would be the Packard workers, most of whom probably lived in Detroit, making that drive every day. And, with Conner being so cramped, probably not a lot of storage space inside the plant for a big inventory of engines, so they would prefer frequent, small shipments, which, for that short distance, could be handled easily by truck if the drive wasn't so difficult.

Speaking of Utica and J-47s, found this article about Packard's work with jet engines some time back. This is the article that says Utica was only 780,000sq ft. Always wondered about that as the For Sale listing when Curtis-Wright pulled out gave the size as a bit under 1.2Msqft, but the photo in the for sale ad looks just like aerials from when the plant was new.

I finally scaled off the 1956 DTE aerials and from the original parts of the plant off the Google Satellite view, which was taken before the plant was torn down, and I get a footprint for the two buildings combined of 1.1 to 1.25Msqft, so the jet engine article is wrong on that point. But then, the north building appears to be two story, probably all offices, so I would measure it's square footage at double the footprint, which would put it at 850-900,000 and the south building at 660-680,000, which isn't close to anything any other source is saying.

The jet engine article also talks about a plant making forgings for the J-47, at 8500 Mt Elliot. The 1956 aerials show that block full of houses. The only plant in the immediate area is at 8650. But then Ward also mentions the Mt Elliot plant, but talks like Mt Elliot is a seperate town, instead of a street in Detroit.

http://www.enginehistory.org/members/articles/PackardGasTurbines.pdf

Posted on: 2014/8/10 21:42
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Re: New "What Ifs?"
#53
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The Briggs contract is easy to understand. Packard was building multiple lines of cars. Contemporaries said the tooling department couldn't keep up.

That was my suspicion. GM introduced the all steel, one piece roof in the mid 30s, so everyone else had to keep up with the trend to larger stampings, which required investment in larger presses. One of the wartime Packard annual reports contains diagrams of what work was going on in which area of the plant prewar and during the war. The area marked "stamping division" in the prewar diagram is occupied by one story buildings. Looks like, to keep up, Packard would not only need to buy new presses, but build a building with a higher roof to contain them.

Rather than make the investment, they just handed the capex issue off to Briggs.

Then there is the issue of the lack of documentation of what equipment Packard shipped over to Briggs when they outsourced. When Nance was forced to bring bodybuilding back in house, apparently they could not figure out what in the Briggs plants belonged to Packard, so they lost all of it.

I have a theory: according to some sources, Packard got a good price on bodies from Briggs, for a couple years, then the price went up. My hunch is Packard bartered the equipment for a discount on bodies for a limited amount of time, which is why they didn't document the equipment transferred and why the price went up after a couple years. Still, sloppy business practice to not document exactly how that deal went down.

Posted on: 2014/8/10 21:58
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Re: New "What Ifs?"
#54
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Since we got sidetracked on shipping unfinished bodies around, here's how Kaiser got bodies from Willow Run to it's west coast plants.

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Posted on: 2014/8/10 22:27
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Re: New "What Ifs?"
#55
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I had a friend, the late Bob Duerr (whom I chronicled here when he died) who was in machinery maintenance at Packard from 1945-1956. He lived in my old neighborhood in northwest Detroit during his Packard years (and until the mid 1980s) and he worked at EGB initially. He was going to Utica a lot when that plant was being set up, both for J-47 work, then the V-8/TU operation, also Conner assy.
The trip from his Detroit home was a long one, 45-60 minutes a day back then, the wild card being weather here in Michigan. When things at Packard became unbearably shaky in the spring of 1956 he took a job at National Twist drill in Rochester MI, and that was no picnic of a commute either. He stayed there until the early 80s, so he had decades of torturous commutes.
Rochester is still not easy to get to, by design almost. I think they like it that way.

Posted on: 2014/8/11 8:12
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Re: New "What Ifs?"
#56
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Quote:

RogerDetroit wrote:
Hello Steve:

Yes, those Hudsons are traveling down Conner Rd. Any eastsider from Detroit would recognize the Parkside Housing Projecct buildings in the background - Parkside was located on the east side of Conner, just north of Warren Ave.

Speaking of getting raw material and finished engines in/out of the Utica Plant. You do know that there was (and still is) a railroad spur at the far southwest of the PPG? See the attached photo. The RR enters the property at 22 Mile Road and Shelby Rd. and makes an "S" curve before it heads due north until almost 23 Mile Road. This was a VERY active RR intersection at one time.

Hello Dave:

As a kid growing up on the east side of Detroit there were always trucks hauling around car bodies. If not Packards, then Hudsons or Cadillac or what ever. And only one brand per truck.


Yes! Agree very much with Roger. I lived the first approximate 10 years of my life on the east side, then on the northwest side not far from Palmer Park and U. of D. I had neighbors in both locations who worked for Packard. On the east side, I had neighbors who also worked for Briggs, Budd, Chrysler, Hudson and many more.

My family also had a double store at 12718 East Jefferson near Conner. I went past the Briggs plant, Hudson plant, Continental Engine plant, Chrysler Plant a jillion times and remember all this stuff well. I could stand in my family's store and look out of the front window and see the old smokestack that said "CONTINENTAL." And my grandparents owned a company that had offices on East Warren Avenue and on East Grand Blvd.

You can hurry up and believe any kid from the east side saw never-ending series of trucks hauling bodies... trucks hauling chassis... trucks hauling wheels... and sometimes, trucks hauling engines! This went on day and night.

And one of the reasons Warren Avenue was configured the way it was in those days was to accommodate and streamline traffic, particularly this kind of truck traffic.

Where Warren was 2-way traffic (from McClellan on east) it was quite wide for then and could easily handle loaded trucks coming from the Conner corridor. And there was no problem even to swing oversized trailers crossing out of the old Fruehauf plant on East Warren.

Where Warren got narrow (McClellan heading west) it was one-way traffic. Forest Avenue was the one-way route heading east up to McClellan.

The only hitch in this traffic flow plan was once when some heavy machinery was being moved from EGB to Conner in the 1950s. I recall an episode where a lowboy-type flatbed truck got stuck trying to make the sharp left turn off of Forest onto McClellan to zig-zag onto eastbound Warren. That was a big deal for a day or so.

Warren heading west was where the trucks traveled hauling Packard bodies to EGB. Most people paid little attention to what was a common sight for Detroiters back then. But I always got a thrill seeing any of these fascinating truckloads heading down the street. Whatever the load and whatever the street. People made things in Detroit back in those days and everybody was working, somewhere, somehow. It was a booming economy. And one heck of a time and place to grow up in.

Posted on: 2014/8/11 9:53
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Re: New "What Ifs?"
#57
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There is a picture in my Cormorant article "Briggs, Connor and Chrysler, trends and fate" from the Spring 2007 issue that shows the east side of the Connor ave. assy plant during the time when Chrysler was fulfilling the last part of the Briggs/Packard body contract. You can see (1954) Packard bodies on a similar trailer rig to the Chrysler photo posted above.

Posted on: 2014/8/11 11:18
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Re: New "What Ifs?"
#58
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any kid from the east side saw never-ending series of trucks hauling bodies

The size of the effort becomes apparent when you start running some numbers. An auto plant can turn out 500 cars in a 8 hr shift. That double decker load of Hudsons kept the plant busy for about 10 minutes. So you're looking at 6 truckloads going to Hudson, another 6 truckloads going to Chrysler, and another 6 loads going to Packard, per hour, in that thee block area bounded by St Jean, Conner, Warren and Jefferson.

Last company I know of that was moving semi-finished car bodies around was AMC. I took the tour of Kenosha assembly in 75, and I remember I was surprised when the guide said many of the bodies were shipped from their plant in Milwaukee. I don't remember how he said they were shipped, though I figure, with the distance involved, it was probably by rail.

I do however still see truck cabs being shipped around once in a while.

People made things in Detroit back in those days and everybody was working,

The last few times I have gone to the auto show at Cobo, I have come back via Michigan, rather than getting back on the freeway. Driving Michigan at 4pm on a weekday is a snap these days. Little traffic. I fly past Clark St, which would have been jammed with Cadillac workers 50 years ago. Now I don't hit any traffic until I'm in Dearborn.

Posted on: 2014/8/11 12:00
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Re: New "What Ifs?"
#59
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"Briggs, Connor and Chrysler, trends and fate"

The Ward book mentions another bit of bad timing. After months of Nance trying to pull together the money to buy Conner, and Chrysler playing him about the price, with time short for any hope of having a body supply for 55, Nance decided to lease the plant and signed the deal, apparently in May 54.

The next day, AMC announced Hudson production in Detroit would be terminated, which would make the Hudson body plant available.

You can see (1954) Packard bodies on a similar trailer rig to the Chrysler photo posted above.

So the big Packards were loaded up sidesaddle too. "Wide load" indeed.

Posted on: 2014/8/11 12:09
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Re: New "What Ifs?"
#60
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Yes they were, and in about that quantity.

Posted on: 2014/8/11 13:20
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